My X-23 Concept

I know that right now they've turned X-23, the Wolverine clone with an extremely problematic backstory, into the new Wolverine. And that's fine so far as it goes, because it makes her a main character and gives her a significant amount of development and all, but it also has that problem that's also affecting the new Thor and the new Captain America, which is that it's only a matter of time before some bright-eyed young editor says, "Hey, you know how we can get a cheap sales boost for the next six issues? Bring the original back!" And then they become a surplus protagonist, and if the comics industry is known for anything, it's known for the woefully mistaken belief that killing off a superfluous protagonist is a shocking twist that will get people to sit up and pay attention rather than the laziest and most obvious thing to do with a story.

So I'd like to see X-23 get her own series as X-23. And my idea for that series is actually related, somewhat, to that problematic backstory I mentioned. Not in the sense of "she was forced to turn tricks and now must get REVENGE!", because if we're getting into lazy and obvious, well...that's high on the list. But I feel like Laura Kinney is a character who has been denied agency pretty much for most of her life, and my idea for her ongoing series would be for her to try to walk away from her past as a killer, her genetic ties to Wolverine, her legacy as an X-Man, and to find out who she is as a person when she's not embroiled in all the chaos that is her life. (Naturally, it's not that easy.)

In my version of the story, she quits all the X-Teams and goes to a normal college. She majors in sports medicine, learning how to help people with debilitating injuries...and, it must be noted, how to inflict debilitating injuries while causing an absolute minimum of physical damage. She still keeps some ties with her mutant friends, spending time every week in a room lined with adamantium and someone like Kitty Pryde who she can't hurt, trying to control her instinctive response to the trigger scent that turns her into a murderous killer. She tries to keep away from as much of her old life as she can...

But there are still people who need her help. From time to time, in exchange for keeping her off the radar of the world's black ops agencies, some of her old "friends" from her time as an assassin ask her to assist with jobs suited to her talents. She's made it clear to them that she's never going to kill anyone again, and they've accepted that...sort of...but her skills make her invaluable in retrieving kidnap victims, repatriating stolen goods, and other tricky tasks that a skilled infiltrator and combatant can perform. The real challenge to Laura Kinney, though, is finding a way to help people without hurting them. Or at the very least, to minimize the damage she does. She's decided she needs to not be Wolverine. Because Wolverine is a berserker, a monster in his own way, and she wants to be something else.